


Nothing Gold Can Stay

by tabacoychanel



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Daemons, Character Study, F/M, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24629143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tabacoychanel/pseuds/tabacoychanel
Summary: Catelyn and her daemon come North to start a new life, and eventually face some hard truths.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Catelyn Tully Stark, Jon Snow/Arya Stark
Comments: 21
Kudos: 145
Collections: Jonrya Week: A Dream of Spring





	Nothing Gold Can Stay

The first time Catelyn lays eyes on Winterfell, Ilarion shrinks against her, tail feathers twitching. It’s hard to say which of them is more intimidated. The bundle that is Robb seems suddenly heavy in her arms. Grey Wind, in kitten form, paws at the air and snores contentedly.

“It’s so forbidding,” Ilarion murmurs.

Catelyn says, “It’s our home.”

He casts his eyes over Robb and Grey Wind. “ _Their_ home, maybe.” Whether it will ever be Cat and Ilarion’s home is a matter on which her daemon evidently reserves judgment.

:::

Robb was conceived on their wedding night, but that was all she had had of her husband. Ned’s Treasa and her Ilarion had retreated to the farthest corner of the bedchamber. Whether they had merely watched, or whether they had done aught else, Catelyn had not asked. Ilarion would have told her if it was needful.

Treasa is a polar bear. When she comes up close, snuffling with her snout, Catleyn freezes. It isn’t like being afraid—she does not think Treasa would hurt her. But it doesn’t seem right either, to reach out right now and stroke that downy white fur. Catelyn and Ned are married but they have known each other mere days. “When you come back,” she tells Treasa, who tilts her head in acknowledgment.

Not everyone comes back from the war, but Ned does. He brings the bastard babe home with him, and the daemon with the unsettling red eyes that do not change no matter its shape. What kind of name is “Ghost”? Who in the seven hells named this creature?

In most instances it falls to the parents’ daemons to name the child’s. Which means either Treasa named her or Jon’s mother’s daemon did—Ashara Dayne or whoever she was. Catelyn is not permitted to ask. Catelyn is supposed to be the ultimate authority within the walls of this castle, but everything to do with Jon is outside of her purview. Not even Jon’s wet nurse answers to Catelyn—she takes her instructions directly from Ned.

Three moons pass before Catelyn musters the courage to touch Treasa, the first time she’s touched another person’s daemon since Ilarion settled as a mallard duck, and she gasps with wonder because she can’t believe there are people who have never dared this, never felt this. There are people walking this earth who go about their whole lives without the touch of their soulmate’s daemon.

:::

Sansa’s birth is easier than Robb’s. Catelyn is still conscious when Sansa’s tiny daemon plops into existence in a shower of gold sparks. He’s currently a possum clinging to Treasa’s back; Ilarion has flown up to coo over him.

For a name Maester Luwin suggests Tryphon which means “softness” or “delicacy” in Old Valyrian. Catelyn beams. She looks down at her daughter’s perfect features and does not doubt she will grow into it.

Then Treasa speaks in her low rumble. “We shall call him Ithel,” she says with an air of finality, and Ilarion flutters down to land next to her.

Catelyn looks at Luwin but it’s Ned who answers. “It means ‘generous lord’ in the Old Tongue, my love. Isn’t that proper?”

And it’s an apt name, it is, but Catelyn wonders how she was supposed to just know the naming conventions of Northern daemons. Maester Luwin has been here longer than she has, and _he_ didn’t even know. How long until this place feels like home? Five years? Ten? A lifetime?

Ned vows to build her a sept to pray in. It won’t be anything as grand as Riverrun’s, he cautions her, but she’s already thrown her arms around him and her vision is blurry with tears.

:::

Arya is a day and a night of unadulterated agony. At the end of it Catelyn expects the babe to be as exhausted as she is but the little one’s lungs are as healthy as anyone’s. Catelyn still doesn’t understand why Rhoynish daemon names are all right while Valyrian ones are not, but when she sees Nymeros zipping around the nursery as a hummingbird she can’t bring herself to care. Nym seems to have twice the energy of Arya, and Arya has _a lot_. Catelyn wakes every hour in the night, and it’s starting to take a toll on her.

The sea change in Arya’s sleep pattern happens without warning. The first night Catelyn wakes up entirely well-rested, she fears she’s woken in the wrong body. She charges into the nursery in a panic. Arya is sucking her thumb, Nym a chimpanzee with his spine curled against hers.

The second night, a nameless worry begins to gnaw at Catelyn.

The third night she catches the culprit red-handed. She almost can’t believe it when she sees the panda rocking her baby and singing lullabies. Catelyn knows every servant in the keep and she knows what all their daemons look like, and _none_ of them is a panda. Then she sees the panda’s red, red eyes.

“Please,” says the panda, “we can help.”

Five-year-old Jon is a shadow that detaches itself from the wall. Jon says nothing.

She wishes the panda would stop looking at her.

“Get out,” says Catelyn, and when neither boy nor panda moves, “I’ll scream for Treasa, I swear I will. Get away from my baby.”

The panda backs away from the crib, but not before removing something from its fur which turns out to be Nym in cricket-form, which it lays gently beside the sleeping Arya. Neither Jon nor his daemon take their eyes off of Catelyn as they back out of the room.

Catelyn touches Arya all over to make sure she’s real, her fingers and toes and her chubby cheeks and the wisps of dark hair on her head.

“Ilarion,” she says, “do you think Treasa would have got rid of him? Or would she have said I overreacted?” She thinks of standing in the Great Hall and watching Treasa throw that unnatural red-eyed pup up in the air and catching it in her giant paws. “Would she have wanted him to stay and _help_?”

After a moment Ilarion decides, “I don’t know,” and Catelyn’s heart is a stone.

“She’s _our baby_. That bastard is not getting his grubby hands on her.”

:::

They say you aren’t supposed to have favorites among your children but Catelyn knows for a fact she is her father’s favorite. Not in the sense that he prefers her over Edmure, the son, the heir; but Hoster indulges her when it does not interfere with his other duties, and that is what being a favorite means.

Bran is Catelyn’s favorite. She doesn’t know how or why it happens, but when the realization dawns on her she asks Ilarion if it’s true, and he shifts his weight from leg to leg. “Of course.”

Bran is _hers_ in a way the girls aren’t—girls never are, girls were born to be given away, and well Catelyn knows it—and Robb who was firstborn which just means he belongs even more to the North. Of all her children Bran has the most open disposition. He is easy to love. She waits for the bastard to swoop in and take this from her too.

By now Arya and Jon have grown inseparable. She toddles after him everywhere, and Catelyn hears the peal of their laughter from all over the castle. She can tell it’s them and not one of the other children because they have the same laugh. She fumes at Ned, “I saw his daemon _pick her up_.”

She gets only a furrowed brow in response. “Her legs are short and the stairs are long.”

“You’re not supposed to do that.”

“Cat, I’ve seen you swat Nym yourself.”

“I’m her _mother_.”

“And he’s her brother,” sighs Ned. “They are children, Cat. Do not make overmuch of it.”

Oh, but she knows better. Jon is not a child—Jon is a thorn planted in her side. Jon is the reason Arya does not behave as well as Sansa, for he encourages her insurrections. As long as Jon belongs to Winterfell, Catelyn never will.

:::

“They say the reigning Targaryen dynasty bred exclusively for dragon daemons,” Maester Luwin is explaining to the children.

“But daemons can’t be bred for!” objects Sansa. “They’re—they’re _you_ , only as an animal,” and Ithel nods vigorously.

“Certain personalities can be bred for, however. Past the point of sense, to the point of madness—and then they lost the dragons anyway,” clucks the Maester.

“What about direwolf daemons?” This is Jon. Wolf-daemons are commoner in the North, and House Stark boasts more than its fair share. Unlike in the rest of Westeros, having a wolf for a daemon is a source of great pride.

Luwin strokes his mustache. “The Lord Rickard, your lord father’s father, had a turtle daemon. Further back than that, I would have to consult the records. I do not think it advisable to depend on any of your daemons settling as a wolf.” His gaze flicks over all of them and rests on Robb, who looks sheepish. They all know if anyone’s daemon is likely to settle as a wolf it’s the heir of House Stark.

Bran, who is really too young to be attending these lessons but hates to be left out, claps delightedly, “Woof woof!”

Arya takes up the cry, and the lesson descends into pandemonium.

Catelyn smiles to herself and leaves them to it. She remembers asking Ned in the early days of their marriage if he did not find it strange, having a bear daemon.

“Firstly, it’s not a black bear or a grizzly bear—someday I’ll introduce you to Maege Mormont—it’s a polar bear. Do you know what the polar bear’s habitat is? It’s the ice. That’s it. That’s the only place it can survive. If I ever lived south of the Neck I wager I would melt.” He had cupped her face in both hands. “Not like you. _You_ are a mallard, the most adaptable of ducks. You thrive wherever you are planted.” And that, she remembers with pristine clarity, is the moment she knew she had a husband she could not only respect but love.

:::

When Ned takes the children to White Harbor on a visit of state, Catelyn convinces him to leave Jon behind. It is not meet that he should parade his bastard before all the realm. “This isn’t the high table here at home,” she says, keeping her voice even only with immense effort. “This is your richest, most important vassal—

“—the Karstarks and the Boltons might take exception to that—

“—and you cannot insist on making no difference between your bastard and your trueborn children. Jon and Robb are of an age—what will people think? What will Lord Wyman think when you introduce your bastard in the same breath as your heir?”

He hesitates. “You’re right. The fewer people see Jon the better.” Which was not Catelyn’s argument _at all_ but it seems she has carried the point.

Sansa is aflutter with anticipation to see her first tourney, but Arya comes to Catelyn with her mouth set in a sullen line, Nym padding behind her in leopard form.

“You told Father not to let Jon go,” she says, accusing.

“Take it up with your father. It was his decision to make.”

“He only made it because you told him to. Why did you do it?”

“Let me braid your hair,” says Catelyn. Arya’s hair is sticking up in all directions as usual.

“Not until you tell me why you don’t want Jon to go with us.”

“Arya, you’re used to Jon’s daemon but other people aren’t. It’s not natural, those red eyes. People will see it and take a fright.”

Arya yanks her scalp from Catelyn’s fingers and twists around to glare at her mother. “Her.”

“What?”

“People will see _her_ and they won’t care at all, there’s people born without daemons and there’s people whose daemons can go leagues away from them without breaking the bond.” Arya is incandescent with righteousness. “Ghost is a _her_ , Mother. If you ever call her _it_ again I’ll cut off all my hair and go around bald as an egg.”

:::

The incident with the apples occurs at the tail end of the harvest. Overall it has not been as bountiful a harvest as they might have hoped, given the length of the summer. It’s unclear how far-reaching the children’s prank is, but it’s clear they’re all in on it save Rickon.

The way to crack open a conspiracy is to break the weakest link. She asks Sansa to join her in the glass gardens and offers her lemon cakes.

Sansa is uncharacteristically quiet while Ithel hovers agitatedly as a woodpecker, then a dragonfly, then a grasshopper. Catelyn is not a mother of five for nothing. “Do you have something you’d like to tell me, Sansa? Something you want to get off your chest?”

“N-no, Mother,” she mumbles, chewing every bite of lemon cake like her life depends on it.

Catelyn turns to pin Ithel with the force of her scrutiny. “Whose idea was it to mix the bad apples in with the others and send them out the South Gate?”

“A-arya,” squawks Ithel, and the admission makes him and Sansa look, if possible, more miserable.

“Do you know there are villagers in Winter Town who will swear up and down those apples are _possessed_? Wobbling back and forth like that. Who obtained the live beetles?”

“Bran,” she says, which does not surprise Catelyn. Bran is good with such things.

“Who hollowed out the cores of the apples?”

“We all did,” says Sansa.

“Who is ‘we all’?”

“Me and Arya and Robb and Theon and Bran.”

Catelyn waits.

“Mother, we were wrong. We’re ever so sorry for it. We didn’t mean to scare all those people and waste all that food. It started as fun, and then it got out of hand. Whatever punishment you decide on, we deserve it.”

“There can be no punishment until all the offenders are brought to justice. Tell me again who carved those apples up.”

There is a note of desperation in Sansa’s tone. “Mother, please. Ask the others. They’ll tell you the same thing.”

“Which just proves you are _all_ colluding to protect Jon. I do not believe for a single second that the five of you pulled off a stunt this brazen without him.”

Sansa lowers her eyes. Ithel is a sugar glider clinging to her sleeve.

“Tell me one more thing,” says Catelyn. “Tell me whose idea it was to lie to my face about Jon’s involvement.”

The answer comes from Ithel, which she expects. “Robb.” Which is not the answer she expects. She raises an eyebrow, and Sansa squirms.

“I didn’t _want_ to lie to you, truly!” blurts Sansa. “I hate lying to you. But the others said—they said you’re not reasonable when it comes to Jon. You know you aren’t. If the rest of us get caught we get off lightly, but Jon…”

“Seven save me. I thought it was just Arya. But _Robb_.” A cold fist grips Catelyn’s heart. “Even you, Sansa, even you are against me in this.”

“There’s no for or against! There’s no sides here, Mother. This is our family.”

“Mark my words, that bastard will never _ever_ be a member of this family,” Catelyn bites out. “Now send in the rest of them so I can deal with them.”

:::

Once, she meets Arya and Jon coming from the stables, hair windswept from their daily ride. They have the same hair: Ned’s hair. Jon has his arm slung around Arya’s shoulders and he’s laughing at something she said. Arya looks up and sees her mother first.

Catelyn will never forget what happens next. Two rabbits crackle into existence and they’re off like a shot, speeding away across the courtyard. They are Nym and Ghost, and they are identical except for Ghost’s eyes, and at this point Jon hasn’t even seen Catelyn.

How often has she seen her daughter’s daemon and the bastard’s assume the same shape in the same instant? Often enough not to remark on it. It’s not normal. Whatever hold Jon has over Arya, whatever the source of their preternatural closeness and their wordless communication, however much joy it may bring Arya now, it will bring her grief before all is said and done. If Catelyn knows anything about being a woman, it is that there is no joy save what you build, brick by brick, for yourself.

:::

Grey Wind settles as a golden eagle. Ghost settles as a direwolf. There is general consternation. Catelyn wonders how the gods can be so cruel, to give the bastard what her own child deserves.

:::

“The septa says you’ve skipped your sewing lessons again.”

“The septa says I have the hands of a blacksmith,” returns Arya, mulish. She shrugs as if to say _How can you expect such a one to give competent sewing lessons?_ “Maybe we should get a different septa. We shouldn’t turn Septa Mordane out with nothing, I don’t mean that at all! We can give her a nice cottage and enough to keep her in comfort. She’s been with us so long.”

“A different septa would only tell you the same thing,” says Catelyn. She is so tired. This conversation is one they repeat every turn of the moon, if not more often.

“Are all septas the same?”

“No, but all ladies must learn to sew.”

“What if they don’t? Are they still ladies? Is a lady born or is it something you learn to be?”

“Arya,” sighs Catelyn, “how will your lord husband rely on you if you can’t run a household? When your father married me he knew nothing except I was a lady, the daughter of a Great House.”

Arya scrunches her face up. “Are you saying Father _wouldn’t_ have loved you if you were less good at needlework? Are you saying if my stitches are crooked enough I won’t have to marry _anybody_?”

“Don’t speak of it as if it’s an escape. _Marrying_ is the way out. Not-marrying is to mire yourself headfirst in a bog.”

“Does it even matter who I marry? You talk like the act of marrying itself is the main thing.”

Catelyn does not deny it, because it’s true. “The match will be arranged for you. Like your father and me—he didn’t love me. He didn’t even know me at first. He grew to love me. I know needlework is hard, but I’m just trying to prepare you, to give you the best chance to have a good relationship with your husband, whoever he is. Do you understand?”

Arya draws her knees up to her chest and tucks her chin into her neck. She is only able to do this because she is wearing breeches rather than a dress. Suddenly Ilarion emits a strangled noise and darts forward to examine the exposed skin at the back of Arya’s neck. There’s a bruise blossoming there.

“Where did you get this?” demands Catelyn.

“Oh, that? In the yard,” Arya tells her, unruffled. “Bran whacked me with the flat of his blade. His _practice_ blade, never you fret.”

Catelyn is deflected into a lecture on swordfighting and how unladylike it is, which was certainly Arya’s intention.

Only much later when she thinks back on this scene does she recall how Nym held very still while Arya nonchalantly answered questions about an injury she was _highly_ unlikely to have sustained in the manner she claimed.

If only Catleyn had known more about swords, or more about Arya. (Bran would have corroborated Arya’s story; Arya would have made sure of it.) The signs were all there. Catelyn was willfully blind to them.

:::

According to Ned the godswood is the oldest part of Winterfell and the rest of the keep rose around it.

For the most part Catelyn avoids the godswood. She thinks about it like the bastard: a part of Winterfell that will forever be closed to her. No matter how many years she spends in the North, no matter how many trueborn children she gives Ned, Jon was here first and so was the godswood. Catelyn is only trying to do her _job_ after all, the job she was born and raised to do, and here she is undermined at every turn by a separate chain of command that wends its way through ancient weirwood roots and Ghost’s unsettling red eyes. Anything to do with the ineffable essence of _Northernness_ is off-limits to Catelyn. Even Sansa prays in front of the heart tree quite as often as she prays with Catelyn in the sept, and sees no contradiction.

Of course the bastard haunts the godswood at all hours of the day and night. Betimes she encounters him in passing and he is slinking back from visiting the hot spring, as attested by the damp mop of his hair and Ghost’s wet fur.

One morning when they are breaking their fast Arya arrives breathless and late, which is hardly noteworthy. What is noteworthy is the state of her clothes.

A dismayed Ned asks, “Little one, are those _moss stains_ on your dress?”

Arya mumbles meekly. Her excuse is inaudible and her eyes do not meet her father’s. Nym is a copperhead snake curled around her neck.

Ned decrees she will wash the stains herself, since she is the one who collected them. The conversation moves on. Out of the corner of her eye Catelyn sees Jon reach over to adjust the crown of wildflowers in her hair, which has fallen askew.

Catelyn almost drops her fork.

Jon is sitting at the opposite end of the high table, as far away as Catelyn as he can get. If it were up to Catelyn he would not dine with them at all, but she and Ned reached a detente on this matter years ago. Arya has been sitting beside Jon since she was old enough not to be spoon-fed. Jon has been laying waste to the disgraceful bird’s nest of Arya’s hair since before that. Only this time Nym is _right there_. From this angle Catelyn cannot tell if Jon actually brushes his fingers over Nym’s scales, or if it’s a trick of the light.

Surely not. Surely if the bastard had _touched_ her daughter’s daemon Arya would have shrieked or yowled. There would have been some reaction. Catelyn remembers once when Lysa took a fistful of Ilarion’s feathers and it hurt like the seven hells. She slants a look at Ghost, who is placidly scratching her ear under the table—not even a flicker of a reaction—and then Ilarion, whose gaze is also riveted on Jon and Arya. Ilarion gives her a minute shake of his head. He has seen nothing openly incriminating.

Does no one else see it? Is Catelyn jumping at shadows?

But of course the incriminating behavior is not occurring at the table. It’s been happening all along. She thinks of a panda rocking a baby to sleep, and she thinks if there is anything going on here she is probably a decade and a half too late to stop it. Better not to see anything at all. Better not to know.

:::

She sees them returning by the Hunter’s Gate.

She spies them by chance. She is high up in the Library Tower when Ilarion whines urgently, “Look, Cat, _look_ ,” and there is Jon and Arya emerging from the wolfswood. Jon is leading both their horses and Arya has run ahead with the daemons.

Nym is a grey wolf today. He bounds forward to lick Arya’s fingers, and she buries her cheek in his fur. A streak of white appears on her other side and Arya sinks her other hand into its muzzle without even looking. There is no mistaking those glowing red coals of eyes, even at this distance.

Catelyn’s spine has turned to jelly.

Ilarion collapses in a heap of wracking sobs.

What pains her the most is the casualness with which Arya reaches for that red-eyed devil. How many times has it happened out of her sight? Catelyn will never know how far back it goes.

All this time she has fretted that her younger daughter is too headstrong, too hungry, too untamable. She has worried that Arya will not have what Cat and Ilarion have with Ned and Treasa, will never know what it’s like to touch another soul who is more yourself than you are.

Catelyn has been worrying about the wrong thing.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if any of the daemon stuff was confusing! I confess I couldn't be arsed to think through the worldbuilding (was Dany born with 3 daemons??) I wrote this because the "not touching other people's daemons" taboo has always struck me as the _perfect_ analogy for Jon and Arya's soul-deep bond and I really hope it worked. Ofc Catelyn is not a bad person, she just displaces a lot of her frustration about her situation onto Jon rather than directing it at Ned or the patriarchy where it belongs, and she has this model of how romantic love works which is clearly not applicable to Arya.
> 
> Jonrya Week is a such a treat and this piece would never have got written without the impetus to post it for AU day and I cannot wait to read what y'all write!!


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